Entre Fenomenologia e Hermenêutica: a medicina como uma arte ética

Abstract

In this paper, I will explain and justify the relations between Phenomenology, Hermeneutics and Medicine by an ethical point-of-view. Taking in mind the issues of illness and disease, I will present a philosophical analysis of the patient-physician relationship in order to justify the ethical stance of health professionals. This will be done firstly through a review of Havi Carel’s fascinating and pertinent reflection on the phenomenology of illness, to which I will add my own proposal of applying to the medical practice the Husserlian notion of epoche. Then, I will claim that an interpretative gaze of illness runs, explicitly or implicitly, through the epoche practice of health professionals. In the third part of this paper, bearing in mind William Stempsey's argument that medicine is an art, I will claim that both the physician’s stance and the philosopher’s stance, in their own particular professional practices – in phenomenology and philosophical-hermeneutics – actualize and set up a dialogical art that is, hence, of ethical nature in essence.